the affairs of others; the entanglement is most disastrously apt to
come about of itself quite soon enough. Yet a little while and
Lancelot will be running Lamoracke through the body, while the King
storms Joyeuse Garde; a few months and your Roman matron will weep
quietly on her unshared pillow--not aloud, though, for fear of
disturbing the children,--while Gracchus is dreadfully seasick at
Actium."
"But that doesn't prove anything," I stammered. "Why, it doesn't
follow logically--"
"Nor does anything else. This fact is the chief charm of life. You
will presently find, I think, that living means a daily squandering of
interest upon the first half of a number of two-part stories which
have not ever any sequel. Oh, my adorable boy, I envy you to-night's
misery so profoundly I am half unwilling to assure you that in the
ultimate one finds a broken heart rather fattening than otherwise; and
that a blighted life has never yet been known to prevent queer
happenings in conservatories and such-like secluded places or to rob a
solitude _a deux_ of possibilities. I grant you that love is a
wonderful thing; but there are a many emotions which stand toward love
much as the makers of certain marmalades assert their wares to stand
toward butter--'serving as an excellent occasional substitute.' At
least, so you will find it. And unheroic as it is, within the month
you will forget."
"No,--I shall not quite forget," said I.
"Then were you the more unwise. To forget, both speedily and
frequently, is the sole method of rendering life livable. One is here;
the importance of the fact in the eternal scheme of things is perhaps
a shade more trivial than one is disposed to concede, but in any
event, one is here; and here, for a very little while in youth, one is
capable of happiness. For it is a colorful world, Mr. Townsend,
containing much, upon the whole, to captivate both eye and taste; a
world manured and fertilized by the no longer lovely bodies of persons
who died in youth. Oh, their coffins lie everywhere beneath our feet,
thick as raisins in a pudding, whithersoever we tread. Yet every one
of these poor relics was once a boy or a girl, and wore a body that
was capable of so much pleasure! To-day, unused to gain the fullness
of that pleasure, and now not ever to be used, they lie beneath us, in
their coffins, these white, straight bodies, like swords untried that
rust in the scabbard. Meanwhile, on every side is apparent the not yet
out-wasted instrument, and one is naturally inquisitive,--so that
one's fingers and one's nostrils twitch at times, even in the hour
when one is most miserable, very much as yours do now."
For a long while I meditated. Then I said: "I am not really miserable,
because, all in all, one is content to pay the price of happiness. I
have been very happy sometimes during the past year; and whatever the
blind Fate that mismanages the world may elect to demand in payment, I
shall not haggle. No, by heavens! I would have nothing changed, and
least of all would I forget; having drunk nectar neat, one would not
qualify it with the water of Lethe."
I rose, not unhandsome, I trusted, in the moonlight. I was hoping Mr.
Charteris would notice my new dress-suit, procured in honor of
Stella's wedding. And I said: "The play is over, the little comedy is
played out. She must go; at least she has tarried for a little. She
does not love you; ah! but she did. God speed her, then, the woman we
have all loved and lost, and still dream of on sleepy Sundays; and all
possible happiness to her! One must be grateful that through her one
has known the glory of loving. Even though she never cared--'and never
could understand',--one may not but be glad that one has known and
loved in youth the Only Woman."
"The Only Woman has a way of leaving many heirs, Mr. Townsend, that
play the deuce with the estate."
"--So to-morrow, like the person in _Lycidas_, I am for fresh fields,
Mr. Charteris. And indeed it is high time that I were journeying,
since she and I have rested, and have laughed and eaten and drunk our
fill at this particular tavern; and now it is closing time. A plague
on these foolish and impertinent laws, say I quite heartily; for it is
cold and cheerless outside, whereas here within I was perfectly
comfortable. None the less I must go, or else be evicted by the
constable; so good-night, my sweet; and as for you, Madam Clotho, pray
what unconscionable score have you chalked up against me?"
I grimaced. "Heavens! what an infinity of sighs, sonnets,
lamentations, and heart-burnings is this that I owe to Fate and
Decency!"
Charteris applauded as though it were a comedy. "In effect, Marian's
married and you stand here, alive and merry at--pray what precise
period of life, Mr. Townsend?"
"I confess to twenty-one at present, sir, though I trust to live it
down in time."
"I would hardly have thought you that venerable. Well, I predict for
you a life without achievements but of gusto. Yes, you will bring a
seasoned palate to your grave,--and I envy you. We open Willoughby
Hall next week, and of course you will make one of the party. For you
write, I know; and you will want to talk to me about editors and read
me all your damnable verses. Nothing could please me more. Good-night,
you glorious boy."
And the little man wheeled and departed, leaving me to reflect, with
appropriate emotions, that I had been formally invited to visit the
founder of the Economist school of writers.
4
"He said it," I more lately observed--"yes, he undoubtedly said it.
And he wrote _Ashtaroth's Lackey_ and _In Old Lichfield_ and _The
Foolish Prince_, and he knows all the magazine editors personally, and
they are probably only too glad to oblige him about anything, and--Oh,
may be, it is only a dream, after all." My heart was pounding, but not
with sorrow or despair or any other maudlin passion; and Stella was
now as remote from my thoughts as was Joan of Arc or Pharaoh's
daughter.
5.
_He Revisits Fairhaven and the Play_
So I went to Willoughby Hall, which stands, as you may be aware, upon
the eastern outskirt of Fairhaven. My reappearance created some stir
among the older students and the town-folk, though, one and all, they
presently declared me to be "too stuck-up for any use," inasmuch as I
ignored them in favour of the Charteris house-party,--after, of
course, one visit to Chapel, which I paid a little obviously _en
prince_, and affably shook hands with all the Faculty, and was
completely conscious of how such happenings impressed us when I, too,
was a student.
So much had happened since then, and I felt so much older,--with my
existence so delightfully blighted, too,--that it seemed droll to find
Colonel Snawley and Dr. Jeal still sitting in arm chairs before
Clarriker's Emporium, very much as I had left them there ten months
ago.
2
By a disastrous chance did Bettie Hamlyn spend that spring, as well as
the preceding year, in Colorado with her mother, who died there that
summer; and to me Fairhaven proper without Bettie Hamlyn seemed a
tawdry and desolate place; and I know that but for Mrs. Hamlyn's
illness--a querulous woman for whom I never cared a jot,--my future
life had been quite otherwise. For, as I told Bettie once, and it was
true, I have found in the world but three sorts of humanity--"Myself,
and Bettie Hamlyn, and the other people."
So I still wrote to Bettie Hamlyn on the seventh of every month--
because that was her birthday,--and again on the twenty-third, because
that was mine.
And I thought of many things as I walked by the deserted garden, where
there was nothing which concerned me now, not even a ghost. I did not
go in to leave a card upon Professor Hamlyn. The empty house
confronted me too blankly, with its tight-shuttered windows, like
blind eyes, and I hurried by.
3
Meanwhile, this was the first time for many years that Willoughby Hall
had been occupied by any other than caretakers; and Fairhaven, to
confess the truth, was a trifle ill-at-ease before the modish persons
who now tenanted the old mansion; and consoled itself after an
immemorial usage by backbiting.
And meanwhile I enjoyed myself tremendously. It was the first time I
was ever thrown with people who were unanimously agreed that, after
all, nothing is very serious. Mrs. Charteris, of course, was
different; but she, like the others, found me divertingly naive and,
in consequence, petted and cosseted me. I like petting; and since
everyone seemed agreed to regard me as "the Child in the House"--that
was Alicia Wade's nickname, and it clung,--and to like having a child
in the house, I began a little to heighten my very real boyishness.
There was no harm in it; and if people were fonder of me because I sat
upon the floor by preference, and drolly exaggerated what I really
thought, it became a sort of public duty to do these things. So I did,
and found it astonishingly pleasant.
4
And meanwhile too, John Charteris could never see enough of me, whom,
as I to-day suspect, Charteris was studying conscientiously, to the
end that I should be converted into "copy." For me, I was waiting
cannily until he should actually ask to see those manuscripts I had
brought to Willoughby Hall, and should help me to get them published.
So there were two of us.... In any event, it was just three weeks
after Stella's marriage that Charteris coaxed me into Fairhaven's
Opera House to witness a performance of _Romeo and Juliet_, by the
Imperial Dramatic Company.
I went under protest; I had witnessed the butchery of so many dramas
within these walls during my college days, that I knew what I must
anticipate, I said. I had, as a matter of fact, always enjoyed the
Opera House "shows," but I did not wish to acknowledge the harboring
of such crude tastes to Charteris. In any event, at the conclusion of
the second act,--
"By Jove!" said I, in a voice that shook a little. "She's a stunner!"
I jolted out, as I proceeded to applaud, vigorously, with both hands and
feet. "And who would have thought it! Good Lord, who would have
thought it!"
Charteris smiled, in that infernally patronizing way he had sometimes.
"A beautiful woman, my dear boy,--an inordinately beautiful woman, in
fact, but entirely lacking in temperament."
"Temperament!" I scoffed; "what's temperament to two eyes like those?
Why, they're as big as golf-balls! And her voice--why, a violin--a
very superior violin--if it could talk, would have just such a voice
as that woman has! Temperament! Oh, you make me ill! Why, man, just
look at her!" I said, conclusively.
Charteris looked, I presume. In any event, the Juliet of the evening
stood before the curtain, smiling, bowing to right and left. The
citizens of Fairhaven were applauding her with a certain conscientious
industry, for they really found Romeo and Juliet a rather dull couple.
The general opinion, however, was that Miss Montmorenci seemed an
elegant actress, and in some interesting play, like _The Two Orphans_
or _Lady Audley's Secret_, would be well worth seeing. Upon those who
had witnessed her initial performance, she had made a most favorable
impression in _The Lady of Lyons_; while at the Tuesday matinee, as
Lady Isabel in _East Lynne_, she had wrung the souls of her hearers,
and had brought forth every handkerchief in the house. Moreover, she
was very good-looking,--quite the lady, some said; and, after all, one
cannot expect everything for twenty-five cents; considering which
circumstances, Fairhaven applauded with temperate ardor, and made due
allowance for Shakespeare as being a classic, and, therefore, of
course, commendable, but not necessarily interesting.
5
"Well?" I queried, when she had vanished. I was speaking under cover
of the orchestra,--a courtesy title accorded a very ancient and very
feeble piano. "Well, and what do you think of her--of her looks, I
means? Who cares for temperament in a woman!"
Charteris assumed a virtuous expression. "I don't dare tell you," said
he; "you forget I am a married man."
Then I frowned a little. I often resented Charteris's flippant
allusion to a wife whom I considered, with some reason, to be vastly
too good for her husband. And I considered how near I had come to
remaining with the others at Willoughby Hall--for that new game they
called bridge-whist! And I decided I would never care for bridge. How
on earth could presumably sensible people be content to coop
themselves in a drawing-room on a warm May evening, when hardly a
mile away was a woman with perfectly unfathomable eyes and a voice
which was a love-song? Of course, she couldn't act, but, then, who
wanted her to act? I indignantly demanded of my soul.
One simply wanted to look at her, and hear her speak. Charteris, with
his prattle about temperament, was an ass; when a woman is born with
such eyes and with a voice like that, she has done her full duty by
the world, and has prodigally accomplished all one has the tiniest
right to expect of her.
It was impossible she was in reality as beautiful as she seemed,
because no woman was quite so beautiful as that; most of it was
undoubtedly due to rouge and rice-powder and the footlights; but one
could not be mistaken about the voice. And if her speech was that,
what must her singing be! I thought; and in the outcome I remembered
this reflection best of all.
I consulted my programme. It informed me, in large type at the end,
that Juliet was "old Capulet's daughter," and that the part was played
by Miss Annabelle Alys Montmorenci.
And I sighed. I admitted to myself that from a woman who wilfully
assumed such a name little could be hoped. Still, I would like to see
her off the stage...without all those gaudy fripperies and
gewgaws...merely from curiosity.... Then too, they said those
actresses were pretty gay....
6
"A most enjoyable performance," said Mr. Charteris, as we came out of
the Opera House. "I have always had a sneaking liking for burlesque."
Thereupon he paused to shake hands with Mrs. Adrian Rabbet, wife to
the rector of Fairhaven.
"Such a sad play," she chirped, "and, do you know, I am afraid it is
rather demoralizing in its effects on young people. No, of course, I
didn't think of bringing the children, Mr. Charteris--Shakespeare's
language is not always sufficiently obscure, you know, to make that
safe. And besides, as I so often say to Mr. Rabbet, it is sad to think
of our greatest dramatist having been a drinking man. It quite
depressed me all through the play to think of him hobnobbing with Dr.
Johnson at the Tabard Inn, and making such irregular marriages, and
stealing sheep--or was it sheep, now?"
I said that, as I remembered, it was a fox, which he hid under his
cloak until the beast bit him.
"Well, at any rate, it was something extremely deplorable and
characteristic of genius, and I quite feel for his wife." Mrs. Rabbet
sighed, and endeavored, I think, to recollect whether it was _Ingomar_
or _Spartacus_ that Shakespeare wrote. "However," she concluded, "they
play _Ten Nights in a Barroom_ on Thursday, and I shall certainly
bring the children then, for I am always glad for them to see a really
moral and instructive drama. That reminds me! I absolutely must tell
you what Tom said about actors the other day--"
And she did. This led naturally to Matilda's recent and blasphemous
comments on George Washington, and her observations as to the rector's
dog, and little Adey's personal opinion of Elisha. And so on, in a
manner not unfamiliar to fond parents. Mrs. Rabbet said toward the end
that it was a most enjoyable chat, although to me it appeared to
partake rather of the nature of a monologue. It consumed perhaps a
half-hour; and when we two at last relinquished Mrs. Rabbet to her
husband's charge, it was with a feeling not altogether unakin to
relief.
7
We walked slowly down Fairhaven's one real street, which extends due
east from the College for as much as a mile, to end inconsequently in
those carefully preserved foundations, which are now the only remnant
of a building wherein a number of important matters were settled in
Colonial days. There Cambridge Street divides like a Y, one branch of
which leads to Willoughby Hall.
Our route from the Opera House thus led through the major part of
Fairhaven, which, after an evening of unwonted dissipation, was now
largely employed in discussing the play, and turning the cat out for
the night. The houses were mostly dark, and the moon, nearing its
full, silvered row after row of blank windows. There was an odour of
growing things about, for in Fairhaven the gardens are many.
Then it befell that I made a sudden exclamation.
"Eh?" said Charteris.
"Why, nothing," I explained, lucidly.
It may be mentioned, however, that we were, at this moment, passing a
tall hedge of box, set about a large garden. The hedge was perhaps
five feet six in height; Charteris was also five feet six, whereas I
was an unusually tall young man, and topped my host by a good
half-foot.
"I say," I observed, after a little, "I'm all out of cigarettes. I'll
go back to the drug-store," I suggested, as seized with a happy
thought, "and get some. I noticed it was still open. Don't think of
waiting for me," I urged, considerately.
"Why, great heavens!" Charteris ejaculated; "take one of mine. I can
recommend them, I assure you--and, in any event, there are all sorts,
I fancy, at the house. They keep only the rankest kind of domestic
tobacco yonder."
"I prefer it," I insisted, "oh, yes, I really prefer it. So much
milder and more wholesome, you know. I never smoke any other sort. My
doctor insists on my smoking the very rankest tobacco I can get. It is
much better for the heart, he says, because you don't smoke so much of
it, you know. Besides," I concluded, virtuously, "it is infinitely
cheaper; you can get twenty cigarettes all for five cents at some
places. I really must economize, I think."
Charteris turned, and with great care stared in every direction. He
discovered nothing unusual. "Very well!" assented Mr. Charteris; "I,
too, have an eye for bargains. I will go with you."
"If you do alive," quoth I, quite honestly, "I devoutly desire that
all sorts of unpleasant things may happen to me for not having wrung
your neck first."
Charteris grinned. "Immoral young rip!" said he; "I warn you, before
entering the ministry, Mr. Rabbet was accounted an excellent shot."
"Get out!" said I.
And the fervour of my utterance was such that Charteris proceeded to
obey. "Don't be late for breakfast, if you can help it," he urged,
kindly. "Of course, though, you are up to some new form of insanity,
and I shall probably be sent for in the morning, to bail you out of
the lock-up."
Thereupon he turned on his heel, and went down the deserted street,
singing sweetly.
Sang Mr. Charteris:
"Curly gold locks cover foolish brains,
Billing and cooing is all your cheer,
Sighing and singing of midnight strains
Under bonnybells" window-panes.
Wait till you've come to forty year!
"Forty times over let Michaelmas pass,
Grizzling hair the brain doth clear;
Then you know a boy is an ass,
Then you know the worth of a lass,
Once you have come to forty-year."
6.
_He Chats Over a Hedge_
Left to myself, I began to retrace my steps. Solitude had mitigated my
craving for tobacco in a surprising manner; indeed, a casual observer
might have thought it completely forgotten, for I walked with curious
leisure. When I had come again to the box-hedge my pace had
degenerated, a little by a little, into an aimless lounge. Mr. Robert
Etheridge Townsend was rapt with admiration of the perfect beauty of
the night.
Followed a strange chance. There was only the mildest breeze about; it
was barely audible among the leaves above; and yet--so unreliable are
the breezes of still summer nights,--with a sudden, tiny and almost
imperceptible outburst, did this treacherous breeze lift Mr.
Townsend's brand-new straw hat from his head, and waft it over the
hedge of trim box-bushes. This was unfortunate, for, as has been said,
the hedge was a tall and sturdy hedge. So I peeped over it, with
disconsolate countenance.
2
"Beastly awkward," said I, as meditatively; "I'd give a great deal to
know how I'm going to get my hat back without breaking through the
blessed hedge, and rousing the house, and being taken for a burglar,
may be--"
"It is terrible," assented a quite tranquil voice; "but if gentlemen
_will_ venture abroad on such terrible nights--"
"Eh?" said I. I looked up quickly at the moon; then back toward the
possessor of the voice. It was peculiar I had not noticed her before,
for she sat on a rustic bench not more than forty feet away, and in
full view of the street. It was, perhaps, the strangeness of the
affair that was accountable for the great wonder in my soul; and the
little tremor which woke in my speech.
"--so windy," she complained.
"Er--ah--yes, quite so!" I agreed, hastily.
"I am really afraid that it must be a tornado. Ah," she continued,
emotion catching at her voice, "heaven help all poor souls at sea! How
the wind must whistle through the cordage! how the marlin-spikes must
quiver, and the good ship reel on such a night!" She looked up at a
cloudless sky, and sighed.
"Er h'm!" I observed.
For she had come forward and had held out my hat toward me, and I
could see her very plainly now; and my mouth was making foolish
sounds, and my heart was performing certain curious and varied
gymnastics which could not, by any stretch of the imagination, be
included among its proper duties, and which interfered with my
breathing.
3
"Didn't I know it--didn't I know it?" I demanded of my soul, and my
pulses sang a paean; "I knew, with that voice, she couldn't be a
common actress--a vulgar, raddled creature out of a barn! You not a
gentlewoman! Nonsense! Why--why, you're positively incredible! Oh, you
great, wonderful, lazy woman, you are probably very stupid, and you
certainly can't act, but your eyes are black velvet, and your voice is
evidently stolen from a Cremona, and as for your hair, there must be
pounds of it, and, altogether, you ought to be set up on a pedestal
for men to worship! There is just one other woman in the whole wide
world as beautiful as you are; and she is two thousand years old, and
is securely locked up in the Louvre, and belongs to the French
Government, and, besides, she hasn't any arms, so that even there you
have the advantage!"
Indeed, Miss Annabelle Alys Montmorenci was of much the same large,
placid type as the Venus of Milo, nor were the upper portions of the
two faces dissimilar. Miss Montmorenci's lips, however, were far more
curved, more buxom, and were, at the present moment, bordered by an
absolutely bewildering assemblage of dimples which the statue may not
boast.
4
"I really think," said Miss Montmorenci, judicially, "that it would be
best for you to seek some shelter from this devastating wind. It
really is not safe, you know, in the open. You might be swept away,
just as your hat was."
"The shelter of a tree--" I began, looking doubtfully into the garden,
which had any number of trees.
"The very thing," she assented. "There is a splendid oak yonder, just
half a block up the street." And she graciously pointed it out.
I regarded it with disapproval. "Such a rickety old tree," I objected,
sulkily.
Followed a silence. She bent her head to one side, and looked up at
me. She was now grave with a difference. "A strolling actress isn't
supposed to be very particular, is she?" asked Miss Montmorenci. "She
wouldn't object to a man's coming by night and trying to scrape
acquaintance with her,--a man who wouldn't think of being seen with
her by day? She would like it, probably. She--she'd probably be
accustomed to it, wouldn't she?" And Miss Montmorenci smiled.
And I, on a sudden, was abjectly ashamed of myself. "Why, you can't
think that of me!" I babbled. "I--oh, don't think me that sort, I beg
of you! I'm not--really, I'm not, Miss Montmorenci! But I admired you
so much to-night--I--oh, of course, I was very silly and very
presumptuous, but, really, you know--"
I paused for a little. This was miles apart from the glib talk I had
designed.